John Hyrcanus escaped his father's assassination and seized control of Jerusalem before his treacherous brother-in-law could reach it. But the early years of his reign were brutal. Antiochus VII invaded Judea and besieged Jerusalem so tightly that Hyrcanus expelled everyone who could not fight, leaving thousands of starving civilians trapped between the city walls and the Seleucid lines. Josephus records that Hyrcanus eventually opened undefined's tomb and took three thousand talents of silver to buy Antiochus off, paying tribute and handing over hostages in exchange for peace.
Then the Seleucid Empire did Hyrcanus the greatest favor imaginable: it destroyed itself. Two brothers, Antiochus Grypus and Antiochus Cyzicenus, plunged Syria into a civil war that consumed all their resources. Hyrcanus stopped paying tribute, stopped answering to any foreign power, and began the most aggressive territorial expansion in Hasmonean history.
He besieged Samaria, the ancient rival city, for a full year. When Antiochus Cyzicenus tried to relieve the siege with Egyptian mercenaries, Hyrcanus's sons Aristobulus and Antigonus defeated them and chased them all the way to Scythopolis. When Samaria finally fell, Hyrcanus did not merely conquer it. He demolished it entirely, flooding the ruins to erase every trace of the city.
He also destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, ending a rivalry that had divided the people of Israel for centuries. And in one of the most consequential decisions of the era, Hyrcanus conquered Idumea, the land of the descendants of Esau, and gave the Idumeans an ultimatum: accept circumcision and live under Jewish law, or leave. They chose to stay. This forced conversion would have an extraordinary consequence that no one could have predicted: one of those Idumean families would eventually produce Herod the Great.
But Josephus records a dramatic turn at the end of Hyrcanus's life. The Pharisees, who had supported his family throughout the revolt, turned against him. At a banquet, a Pharisee named Eleazar publicly demanded that Hyrcanus give up the High Priesthood, insinuating that his mother had been a captive and that he was therefore unfit to serve. Hyrcanus was furious. A Sadducee advisor named Jonathan convinced him that the entire Pharisaic party was behind the insult. Hyrcanus broke with the Pharisees, abolished their religious ordinances, and aligned himself with the Sadducees. The rift between the Hasmonean dynasty and the Pharisees would shape Jewish politics for generations.